“I should like to have some of all the trees,” replied Clara, “because then we could study about them better.—­Wouldn’t you, Miss Harson?”

“I think so,” said her governess, “if they were not undesirable to have, as some trees are.  If it were always May, I should want horse-chestnut trees; for I think there is scarcely anything so pretty as those fresh leaves and blossoms.  The branches, too, begin low down, and that gives the tree a generous spreading look which is very attractive in the way of shade.  In more southern States they have a longer season of beauty than those in the North.”

“Do people ever eat the horse-chestnut?” asked Edith.

“Not often, dear—­it is too bitter; but an old writer who lived in the days when it was first seen in England says that he planted it in his orchard as a fruit tree, between his mulberry and his walnut, and that he roasted the chestnuts and ate them.  It is like the bitternut-hickory, which even boys will not eat.”

“I should think that somebody or something ought to eat it,” said Clara, thoughtfully; “it seems like such a waste.”

Everyone laughed at her wise air, and she was asked if she intended to set the example.  She was not quite ready, though, to do that; and Miss Harson continued: 

“A naturalist once took from the tree a tiny flower-bud and proceeded to dissect it.  After the external covering, which consisted of seventeen scales, he came upon the down which protects the flower.  On removing this he could perceive four branchlets surrounding the spike of flowers, and the flowers themselves, though so minute, were as distinct as possible, and he could not only count their number, but discern the stamens, and even the pollen.”

“Oh!” exclaimed the children; “how very curious!”

“Yes,” replied their governess; “it shows how perfect and wonderful, from the beginning, are all the works of God.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

AMONG THE PINES.

“How good it smells here!” exclaimed Edith, with her small nose in the air to inhale what she called “a good sniff” in the fragrant pine-woods.

Miss Harson had taken the children in the carriage to a pine-grove some miles from Elmridge, and Thomas and the horses waited by the roadside while the little party walked about or stood gazing up at the tall slender trees that seemed to tower to the very skies.  Thomas was not fond of waiting, but he thought that he had the best of it in this case:  it was more cheerful to sit in the carriage and “flick” the flies from Rex and Regina than to go poking about in the gloomy pine-woods.  Yet, notwithstanding the darkness of its interior and the sombre character of its dense masses of evergreen foliage as seen from without—­whence the name of “black timber,” which has been applied to it—­the shade and shelter it affords and the sentiment of grandeur it inspires cause it to become allied with the most profound and agreeable sensations; and it was something of this feeling, though they could not express it in words, which possessed the young tree-hunters as they stood in the pine-grove.